Not so Dusty

I know that at the beginning of the month said that I would be getting back into scanning photos and the like, well that did not happen for a variety of reasons, that I won't go into here. Instead I go the opposite of dusty, I'll so you a picture I took today...

Dan

The Dome Stadium

Ah the King Dome, what a place for a car show. They blew it up 10 years ago today, I didn't even realized it was happening I remember, my friends did, so they spend the weekend sleeping on my floor waiting for the event. I had to work so I went to work and missed the whole thing. I remember driving home that night, and getting off I-90 to head north on I-5 and no Dome. I remember not even thinking about it at first, but then reminded myself to take a long look. That old concrete eye sore was where I saw the my first baseball game, M's vs. the Angels, 1978, a four overtime Supersonics game vs. the Atlanta Hawks and the only professional football games I've ever seen in person.

It is the baseball games I remember enjoying the most, it was a terrible baseball venue, almost as terrible as some of the Mariner teams I went to watch. As terrible as it was, it was fun though, throwing peanuts at the leftfielders, heckling them with every chance. Wandering around looking for better seats, and finally ending up in the 2nd row behind home plate, heckling the major league scouts and the batter. I watched Julio Cruz and Jim Essian hit back to back homers there and I saw Randy Johnson lose a lot of games. I recall the final game in the dome when Griffey made a game saving catch and a half naked guy ran out onto the field. Most of all I remember the floor was always sticky, and the sight lines were awful, it was ugly and unrefined, pretty much the opposite of Safeco. But every once in a while, I find myself missing sitting the left field seats chanting Toledo Mud-hens with 25 other guys who had consumed too many peanuts and drank one or two too many beers. And when our chants caused the Indian leftfielder miss played a can of corn into a game winning 3 base error. All was right in the universe.

Jump

Not to get wildly sentimental, but thinking back to the days long ago, I enjoyed jumping on the bed. I really thought it was a lot of fun, of course my parents thought it would ruin the mattresses, so they stopped us from doing it as often as they could.
The boy really enjoys jumping on the bed, it's one of his most very favorite things. Watching him I remember just how much fun it was for me too and just how damned lucky I am...

Oh for a Little Cash to Invest

If I only had money to throw it insurance stocks. Well I don't so, that's too bad. The insurance magnates are probably annoyed that they cannot toss aside the sick and expensive on their ledgers, but I would guess that they are lighting cigars with $20 bills, knowing that 32 million new customers are going to be coming their way. Of course there are many good things with regards to this Bill, such as the some of the reforms that prevent insurance companies from abusing their position.

But there are three grand problems, first since there is no cost containment, so the actual cost of medical care will continue to skyrocket and thus the cost of medical insurance will too. Second, the bill does nothing to address nation health, which only makes the first issue more dire. Finally, is the cost of this bill on our local communities, counties and states. My family pays something like $8500 a year for health insurance, and I am sure my employer pays even more than that to cover us, now with 32 million additional people forking over money to insurance companies, that just means even less money spent locally to sustain businesses and to create tax revenue to maintain a variety of things such as, roads, parks, CPS, etc. So this means more taxation will be required to close the gaps that this Bill will create.

I was not a fan of National health care, until this was pointed out to me. Think of it, if the National Government paid for health care. It would then free up about $8500 for a family of three, plus lets say a portion, if not all, of the cost incurred by the employer to insure the work force. The money would find its way to the employee's pocketbook via, stock prices, dividends, bonuses or wages. It is likely that this would offset the additional federal taxation that would be incurred and still provide more money to be spent locally. And with the Feds footing the bill, national health would soon become a priority.

To me, today is a hollow victory, change for the sake of change. The Republicans were correct for all the wrong reasons. Regardless it appears that 2014 is shaping up to be an interesting year.

Today's photo? It's fork in the road, taken near the end of Neal Road in Fall City.

Dan

March Maddness

March is for basketball, if you enjoy basketball. It you don't like basketball, March is for green beer or daffodils or something. As a kid March didn't really mean anything other than the first somewhat warm days of the year were bound to happen. It also meant that at school and at home it was time to play basketball. I had a hoop in our backyard, it wasn't regulation height but that didn't matter, I just enjoyed shooting baskets. Ah the good times, anyway tonight's photo is me shooting baskets in my backyard one cloudy March day. Note the angle of the camera shoot makes me appear like I could jump, trust me, I could not jump that high.

Dan

Happy Birthday Ted

It may not be a good thing to have your birthday fall on blog day for America's Finest Blog, you just might not like what happens. That said, Ted, I am actually going to avoid the real nice photos I have of you and I'll avoid telling the story of a St. Patrick's Day 10 years back, that left you running the wrong way home. I guess I'm getting soft in my old age, because even a couple years back this post would be about the real nice photos and how it came to past the unabomber stood over you and laughed. Instead, Ted I'm going to say that you are just a damn fine American citizen and deserving of a good and creative year.

Cheers

Rails to Trails

The whole concept of rails to trails seems nice doesn't it? You turn some dirty old railroad tracks into an utopian clean walking/bike path. After all, a nice quiet path is so green and railroads are a vestige of the gilded age, when we looked the other way so a few men could rape the earth for their profits. But trails from rails isn't 100% rosy, after all, the rails would not have been pulled up it the line was still profitable. So the sad piece is that our consumer economy has rendered the twice weekly local freight obsolete. After all local freight works better when there is local production. Again we tie into the death of the boxcar and the rise container trains full of plastic crap from China. Now is it greener to have the Chinese make plastic crap and put it on a ship and it sail across the Pacific, or have it built locally and then shipped by diesel electric train across the land. I don't know. But you wonder if we will ever turn trail into rail...
Tonight a picture from the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail, once a upon a time, the Seattle, Northshore and Eastern and then later the Northern Pacific.

1001

1001 is so named as it will be picture 1001, in America's Finest Blog. It could represent change and a new beginning, or it could be a quiet fall day on Green Lake.

1000

Tonight I will post this blog's 1000th photo, so that's a milestone. Since it is also an old friend's birthday, the photo will be of her and her daughter from a few years back. Happy birthday Heather.

Dan

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

Today's my sister's birthday and it got me thinking about what a funny thing the mind is, you can convince yourself that the past was truly one way or the future will be glorious, all the while ignoring the present. Now some folks ignore the present because of hardship, others ignore it to live in past glory, for the latter photographs can be very difficult things to look at, since they tend to show the actual event. Albeit just a snapshot of the event, the event none the less. Now what this proves is that you better start enjoying the moment, because otherwise you'll not have anything when your photograph shows up on a blog 20 some years later. But if you can say with conviction, "Yeah that's me rockin' the shorty shirt and I'm still enjoying it," you have defeated the sinister power of the old family photo.

Dan

Things I Don't Much Like

I don't much like Yellowjackets or bees or eggs or...lets just say the list is probably too long. Anyway today as a wandered around the Medowbrook farm I was buzz several times by very large bumble bees, it was annoying to say the least. But it made me think about the orchard, or whatever that place was, in Prague that I wandered into, trying to get this building with the American Flag flying. Anyway in this orchard there were bees the size of hummingbirds, or so it seemed. Now when I say I don't much like bees, I'm actually rather freaked out by bees buzzing about my personal space, so this orchard wasn't a lot of fun to be in, but it was beautiful. I made it in a couple hundred yards and realized I had really no clue to how to get where I wanted to go, so turned around and walked back out and left the abnormally large bees behind. But come to think of it, I problems with yellowjackets in Prague too. As I would relax in the beer garden, I found them trying to drink my beer every afternoon. Now that I didn't much like...

The Burlington Northern

Well today is the 40th birthday of the Burlington Northern. The final merger of Mr. Hill's railroads into one unit. When I was a kid I remember lots of Great Northern and Northern Pacific boxcars all over the place. When I got older something happened, there were a lot less boxcars in general and Great Northern and Northern Pacific boxcars specifically. Now there are even fewer Burlington Northern boxcars. Trains, I hate to say have become sort of boring, long lines of containers full of plastic goods from China, are not nearly as fun as boxcars.

Oh well.

Mt. Rainier's 111th

Today is the day Mt. Rainier became the 5th National Park back in 1899. Now that was a good idea.

Wellington

Today is the 100th anniversary of the deadliest avalanche in U.S. history, 96 people lost their lives when 10 foot high, half mile long, quarter mile wide slab of snow broke loose above the railroad on Windy Mountain, knocking two trains down an 150 foot hillside to the Tye River. It would take days for the line to be re-opened and months to recover all the bodies. The avalanche had some lasting impacts on the Northwest, first Wellington, the scene of the avalanche was renamed Tye, shortly after the accident. Then 9 miles of snow sheds were constructed between Scene and Tye and finally in 1929 the 7.8 mile tunnel under Stevens Pass was opened and Tye passed into history, the tracks were pulled and the town burned.

When I was a kid I can remember the snow sheds on the opposite side of Stevens Pass, my dad and I did a lot fishing in those days and drove over the pass several times a year, the sheds always fascinated me, ghostly reminders of an antique age. For 10 or 11 year old, time is hard to put into perspective. I remember we drove over pass one spring after a tough winter and the sheds had collapsed. I was sadden no epitaph, no words of thanks for years that they stood quiet guard, the lasting legacy of Wellington. Of course, I didn't know of Wellington at the time, all I knew was that this stoic old sheds had given up the ghost. From then on the trip over the pass was always a bit sad.

Back before the sheds the Great Northern relied on men with shovels, whom were paid 15 cents a hour, and rotary snowplows to clear the tracks. When the big storms hit in late February 1910, the big rotaries worked for days to try to open the route between Wellington and Scene but at last, with Wellington cutoff from the east and the west, coal began to run short, finally there was only enough left to warm the passengers. The rotaries where silent, then shortly after midnight on March 1st, in a driving rain and thunderstorm, the snow gave way and took 6 locomotives, 15 rail cars and 96 lives down to the Tye River.

Tonight's photo is Rotary Snowplow # 10. This plow was the Northern Pacific's plow to keep Stampede Pass clear, it was built about the same time as those used by the Great Northern on Stevens Pass.